Source: snapvoip.blogspot.com

It looks like VocalTech needs a little boost as it has received NASDAQ Staff Deficiency Letter on February 5th, 2008. The Staff Deficiency Letter indicates that VocalTec had failed to meet the terms of Nasdaq, with the minimum bid price requirement for continued listing set forth in Marketplace Rule 4320(e)(2)(E)(ii). The letter says that the company has until August 4, 2008 to regain compliance. Compliance will be regained if during the period ending on August 4, 2008 the bid price of the Company’s shares closes at $1.00 per share or more for a minimum of 10 consecutive business days.

VocalTech is exploring different avenues to remedy the situation and the following news release, mentiones that over 50 telecom service providers and partners have deployed VocalTec’s Essentra™ VoIP solutions on the IBM System x server platform. This certainly should boost the morale as well as the stock price.

"We are very pleased that the telecommunications community is recognizing the value of our Essentra solutions,” said Yair Golan, VP Marketing and Business Development at VocalTec Communications. “The combination of IBM’s advanced server technology together with our Essentra VoIP Software results in a robust solution for our service provider customers, meeting their stringent requirement for reliable service delivery. This relationship demonstrates VocalTec’s commitment to delivering superior value to our customers.”

Source: snapvoip.blogspot.com

Flat Planet and a phone lead me to a Jeff Pulver’s article about iPhone. It seems that before Cisco’s iPhone was registered after the fact that Vocaltech’s and Jeff use of the name iPhone.
As the articles mention, both the authors have had connection to this iPhone name. I also did some search but could not come up with an instant where iPhone was used for a cell phone. Does Cisco’s trademark discription include cell phone or only internet phones?
I think it is going to be a interesting case unless Apple and Cisco settle out of the court.

Links;
Flat Planet and Phone..
Jeff Pulver + iPhone

Source: voipcentral.org

VocalTech’s stocks have risen many-fold in the last few weeks despite the IP stocks are not really skyrocketing, the vonage deal notwithstanding. Though regarded the pioneer VoIP vendor, VocalTech hasn’t been doing that well as well despite outlasting many such VoIP companies. People have more or less forgotten about the company that serves a narrow band of (loyal) users.

So what is the reason for the current surge in its stocks? Jon Arnold in his blog asked for some reasons. He has reasons to feel that the market might be rigged though he didn’t mention that in so many words. I can feel your predicament Jon.

The answer, not surprisingly might lie in one of the comments on his post by someone called Readsalot_99 who says;

My guess for rapid movement of stock is two-fold:

1. few shares available for trading.

2. Not only is financing arranged, but maybe some deals to be announced soon. DT could be a buyer of product and Lucent could be the other buyer. VocalTec was in something like 17 trials for the Essentra product but couldn’t close the deals beacause of size, Lucent as a user/distributor doesn’t have problem with size. As was mention sometime ago TD felt business would come from DT after the merger.

Only opinions and speculations, but they sound right to me.

I agree to that really. But I have another reason for this that might sound interesting to a few. I dunno whether I am right on this, nonetheless I want to share it.

The other reason - Vonage! Why? Many are speculating that Vonage is getting all the funding as it could be bought up at a hefty price soon.

The other speculation is that bigger VoIP companies are thinking to acquire smaller VoIP concerns (so might include VocalTech, the undying old player).

VoIP has a great future, so the rise. I won’t be surprised to see other VoIP stocks rising. It happened to IT companies (and even old economy companies listed under ‘rogue’ catagory who declared that they were going ’software’) just before the dot com bubble burst.

With 11000+ players and so much hype, VoIP is also a bubble; it is going to burst soon. Only the mighty will remain. Rise in the VocalTech stocks are symptomatic of the inevitable.

For further details on VocalTech shares read Jon Arnold’s blog.